Day One

Trial Dinner

6 am – 11 pm, boy I’m glad that was only the trial dinner yesterday! It was almost midnight before we got home so I missed the blog last night. Today we hit the road by 6:30 am and snuck out of there early tonight at 9:30 pm. No one said this was going to be easy and we all came with our game faces on to do some serious work. There are bumps in the road trying to figure out recipes and routines, but we have some seriously dedicated Can-Do Chef’s that are here to get the job done.

We have this Scottish Chef Trevor Garden from Glasgow who is dominating the production kitchen and keeping me fed with prepped product so we can pull together hot food for both the Athletes and Workforce. Stephen Lee our acquisition Chef is keeping us in food and Chef Paul Rogalski, my Iron Chef buddy has the biggest job trying to co-ordinate all the prep cooks. What amazes me most is how Chef Michael Smith can be taking it in the rear from every direction and still stop in the middle of complete pandemonium and pat one of the young cooks on the back to cheer them up or stop for a photo shot every time a fan asks him (imagine doing that a dozen times a day)

One can not truly imagine the magnitude of feeding like this on a continual basis until you're immersed into it. The reality is the job has to get done and we’ll lead from the front because failure is not an option.  We were pretty hot in the kitchen today for our first official day and things went so smooth I decided to get a photo with my buddy Mike in the fridge just to cool down a little, still got 7 weeks to go.

Olympic Chef Bill